One US Congressman actually understands technology and looks to rally anti-SOPA support

Okay this is cool on a couple of levels. Not only do we have a United States Congressman who has a really good understanding of technology and the Web but he’s also a gamer.

Congressman Jared Polis is a serial Internet entrepreneur with more than a few successful web business under his belt and he has come out strongly against SOPA and took the the user forums for the online game League of Legends where he is a long time player to gather support against the bill.

Here is the comment he left on the conversation thread started by Riot Games, the company behind the game, CEO Brandon Beck:

Hi, this is Congressman Jared Polis of Colorado. As a member of the League of Legends community (partial to Anivia and Maokai), and as someone who made his living as an Internet entrepreneur before being elected to Congress, I’m greatly concerned about the future of the Internet and gaming if Congress doesn’t wake up. You may have heard that Congress is currently considering a bill called the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. While SOPA has a ton of problems, there are some significant issues that I thought fellow gamers might want to know about.

I’m particularly concerned that SOPA might stifle the kind of innovation that brings us games we love, such as LoL. The bill makes it far too easy for angry competitors to sue good law abiding companies out of existence. It threatens any company or website that depends on user-generated content, even companies like Riot. Instead of coming up with great ways to keep making games like LoL even better, companies will have to spend their money hiring lawyers. That’s why companies like Riot, who want to protect the games they create, are opposed to SOPA.

I’ve been working on alternative legislation that would protect the games companies create while also fostering innovation. But we also need you to call your members of Congress and let them know of your opposition to SOPA. This bill has a very real chance of passing, and it is up to all of who want to protect the Internet to take action. More information is available at http://keepthewebopen.com/. Please make your voices heard in this debate! I will be happy to respond to your posts below, and will check back every few hours today and respond to as many as I can.

via VentureBeat

As I said on Google+ when I shared this news tidbit – it is nice to see a US politician that actually understand technology – it is also sad to see that so very few of his colleagues understand it.

Comments

comments

Tags: Congressman Jared Polis, League of Legends, online games, SOPA, US Congress

About the Author

Steven Hodson Steven has been around the tech world long enough to see most of the stuff we think of cool happen before which leads to a certain bit of cynicism that has contributed to him being known as the cranky old fart of the Internet. Besides sharing some of the goodness that he finds with you here at 42x you can also find him curating some digital goodness at Winextra (tech type stuff) and Rotten Gumdrops (for your daily dose of WTF).